Estate Appraisal

The IRS requires a qualified appraiser, USPAP compliant (Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice), for submission of Estate Tax appraisals. An unqualified appraisal will be rejected and possibly fined. In  addition, there are specific market levels and approaches associated  with an Estate Appraisal which directly influence values. The misuse of  these levels and approaches could result in higher taxation or lower  than allowable values--audit.

Collector’s Fine Art Appraisal is exceptionally reputable and has performed hundreds of IRS qualified and accepted appraisals.  Whether retained for general furnishings or the highest level of  collections, antiques, fine art, textiles, or ethnographica, we have  vast exposure. Likewise, if there is an object outside our area of  expertise the appraisal will be performed by an expert of that field.

True Story: We were retained by an estate which owns an  enormous collection of vintage posters for an appraisal review. The  trustee was suspecting inaccurately high values. In fact with a small  sampling, discovered that indeed the values, for the purpose of estate  tax, were inaccurate. The marketplace levels and comparable sales  records were inappropriate and thereby the values were tremendously  overstated. Had this been an appraisal for the final passing, no  surviving spouse, the estate tax would have been unnecessarily higher.